Lisa Dickey - Bears in the Streets

Strolling through the Patriarch’s Ponds neighborhood, I couldn’t believe how clean, renovated, and, well, cheerful it seemed. Wine stores, restaurants, cake shops, and cafés abounded, but instead of the air of ostentation that permeated Moscow ten years earlier, the city felt more relaxed.

As I walked past the TASS [5] The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union, or TASS, was the main newsgathering organ in Soviet times. building, with its familiar globe and arched entryway, I gaped at a sight I’d never seen in Russia: bike lanes. A little farther down the block was another shock—a row of gleaming bicycles in a bike-share rack. Freshly painted pedestrian crosswalks allowed people to cross the street at their leisure, a big change from the sprint-for-your-life system of years past. I might as well have been in Amsterdam, or Vienna; this certainly didn’t feel like the Moscow I’d known for decades. It reminded me of how New York’s Times Square felt after then-mayor Rudy Giuliani swept in and “cleaned up”: gleaming, wealthy, but sanitized.

After ten more minutes of strolling, I arrived at Manezh Square. The giant underground shopping mall was still there, of course, with its row of fast-food joints. I walked by a Sbarro, then found myself eyeing, of all places, McDonald’s. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and was starving. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten at a McDonald’s, so in the name of research, and hunger, I headed in.

The place was a madhouse. People swarmed everywhere, crowding the cashiers’ counter, hovering for tables, and waiting their turn at automated kiosks where you could order on a large touch screen and pay with a credit card. I decided to order at the counter, taking my place among a horde of people that resembled a crowd of bees pushing its way into a hive.

Waves of chatting, laughing teenagers came in, families scurried about, and tables were packed with every kind of diner imaginable—young and old, foreigners and Russians. Overall, the age skewed young, and as I hunted for a table after getting my meal, I had the unwelcome thought that most of my fellow diners probably weren’t born yet on my first visit to Moscow.

Suitably (or unsuitably) nourished, I headed back out. I walked up the cobbled passageway by the red-brick State Historical Museum and emerged onto Red Square. Even though I’d been there dozens of times, I was still struck by how beautiful, sprawling, and impressive it was. To my right was a line of people, and like a good Soviet, I immediately got in it, though I had no idea what we were queuing for. This turned out to be the line to see waxy Lenin in his tomb—one of the few elements of Moscow that, even 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, remains unchanged.

In the evening, I ate dinner at the Margarita Café—a restaurant I’d first visited back in 1988. It was a modest little eatery back then, serving flaky pastries and muddy coffee in thin plastic cups, popular primarily because it was near the author Mikhail Bulgakov’s old apartment. In the Soviet days, Bulgakov’s apartment building was a hangout for disaffected youth, who gathered to smoke, drink, and talk in a stairwell covered with graffiti homages to the author’s banned masterpiece, The Master and Margarita . This whole area—Bulgakov’s building, the streets around Patriarch’s Ponds, the Margarita Café—felt like a secret haunt for the literary set, a raw and magical place where devotees could imagine themselves as characters in the novel.

By 2015, the area had officially become a monument to Bulgakov. Now there are not one, but two Bulgakov museums—one in the apartment where he lived, the other in the building next door. The two apparently compete, engaged in a spitting match over which is the “official” museum. And while graffiti still covers the stairwell walls, the scrawlings are relatively new, as the drawings and quotes from earlier generations have been unceremoniously painted over. A few blocks away, by Patriarch’s Ponds, a posted sign declares DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS—a nod to chapter 1 of The Master and Margarita .

I found these changes amusing, though there was something artificial about them too; what once was a spontaneous, unofficial shrine to a beloved author now had a whiff of Disneyland to it. As I sat in the Margarita Café, where the wobbly metal tables and plastic plates had been replaced by polished wood, gothic paintings, and a menu of seasonal “Russo-European” cuisine, I pondered how we all love to pine for the old days, building them up in memory as some kind of golden time. Then I took a few photos with my phone, uploaded them instantly to Facebook, tagged some friends from the embassy days, and enjoyed a real-time cross-global conversation with people in London, New York, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles.

The day I arrived in Moscow, I called MC Pavlov. We’d spoken briefly by phone a week earlier, and now it was time to make a plan to meet. “Oh, there’s a special service happening at the Hare Krishna temple tomorrow. We can go to that,” he said, with enthusiasm. Then he asked, “Are you married?”

This threw me. To the best of my recollection, I hadn’t told him I was gay, and while I was pretty sure he wouldn’t care, it felt weird to tell him over the phone. Besides that, it was one thing to be gay, and quite another to actually be married; even people who were unfazed by the first sometimes balked at the second. So I dodged the question, saying, “It’s complicated.”

“Ah, OK! Sorry!” he blurted, seeming embarrassed. “I didn’t mean anything by that. It’s just that the service is for women who want to pray for their husbands. But if you don’t have a husband, you can pray for a family member or a friend or whoever you want.” I told him that sounded perfect, and we made a plan to meet at 10 a.m. at the statue of Pushkin, not far from my hotel.

Arriving the next morning, I saw to my relief that Pavlov looked the same as, if not better than, he had in 2005. He appeared to have lost weight, and he smiled brightly as he handed me a long-stemmed rose. We headed off the metro speaking English together, though he struggled to come up with words. I offered to speak Russian, but he said he wanted the practice. So we chatted amiably, if slowly, on the metro, and by the time we arrived at the Krishna temple I was feeling at ease with him.

Arriving at the temple, he said, “Hey, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, asking if you had a husband.”

“Don’t worry!” I replied, smiling. “Let me explain: I am married, but I don’t have a husband. I’m married to a woman.”

Pavlov looked stunned, cocking his head to one side. “Wow, OK,” he finally said. “So… who’s the man?”

Now I was stunned. Had he misunderstood? “Neither of us,” I replied. “There is no man. We’re both women.”

“Yeah, but I mean, who’s the man in the relationship?”

Now I was annoyed. “Neither,” I said, an edge creeping into my voice. “That’s not how it works.”

“Ah, OK, OK,” he said, grasping my irritation. “So, let’s go in!” he chirped. He held the door for me, and we entered the lobby of the temple.

Of all the people I’d worried about telling on this trip, Pavlov hadn’t been one of them. As a jazz-funk musician, and a person who’d demonstrated plenty of openness to new ideas, he seemed like the kind of guy who’d be chill about it. I was dismayed, but also realized I’d made an unfair calculation. Why should I assume that a person who’s grown up in an anti-gay society, who may or may not know any openly gay people himself, will automatically be accepting of it?

We took off our coats and shoes and headed into the main part of the temple. He walked me around, showing me the statue of the Swami and offering me some kind of milky liquid meant to purify my system, which I declined. Then he walked me into a small side room, where the special ceremony was about to begin.